US: Union says no room for old technology in new airport towers

Two state-of-the-art airport towers due to go into operation this fall in San Francisco and Las Vegas will first need extensive remodelling to make room for technology that dates backs to the early days of air traffic control, according to union officials. The new rooms on top of the towers where controllers watch aircraft operations were designed for equipment that helps controllers track planes electronically. But the prototype electronic strip system the Federal Aviation Administration plans to use is too unstable and “crashes” too often to be relied upon, said Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. This means that controllers need to quickly turn to the historic system of passing paper strips from one controller to another to hand off responsibility for a plane and carefully line up multiple strips to keep tabs on the status of flights. Here’s the problem: the tower “cabs” have been designed without the tables, printers and places to hang strips that are necessary for controllers to use the old system while still keeping an eye on planes, he said. This is an example of the larger problem that the FAA’s remodel of these towers relied on the assumption that the new technology would work. The FAA’s continued use of paper strips to track planes when air traffic control systems in many countries have long since moved to electronic methods is frequently cited by lawmakers and industry officials as an example of the agency’s often painfully slow adoption of new technology. The paper strips are more time-consuming, which slows the handling of planes. <br/>